Jeffrey Archer is one of the world’s most popular writers, and has noted in his several visits to India that even the pirates love to flog his books. The Indian edition of his latest Cometh the Hour has an illustration of Mumbai (a couple on a scooter against the Gateway of India) on the cover— there is a totally unnecessary subplot of an important character, falling in love with an Indian girl and coming up against her ‘khap’ kind of family. He tries a Bollywoodian elopement that ends tragically. The author has enough Indian fans, he did not have to include this corny segment and end up making the country look bad. (Hindi film fans would remember Rakesh Roshan’s Khudgarz, based on Archer’s saga of two friends-turned foes, Kane And Abel, without permission, of course-- a kind of flattering piracy.)

In Cometh the Hour, the sixth, and penultimate, novel in the Clifton Chronicles series (after Mightier Than the Sword), the Clifton and the Barrington families fit a lot more complications into the pages that you’d have thought possible. But then, Jeffery Archer knows what would please his readers.

It is possible to enjoy Cometh the Hour without having read the earlier five. By and by the various characters and their relationships become clear. The Clifton and Barrington family trees are helpfully provided. A net search does throw up plot synopses of the earlier Chronicles, and a quick read would make this story clearer.

In this book, the clans reach the 1970s; it opens with a libel trial that involves Emma and Harry Clifton, Lady Virginia Fenwick and her ex-husband, Sir Giles Barrington. The outcome of the case hinges on a suicide note, which, if presented as evidence, would mean victory for Emma, but also the end of Sir Giles’s political career. His sister Emma, married to bestselling author Harry Clifton (their son Sebastian falls in love with the Indian girl) would rather lose then case than let that happen. But the letter is leaked to the media, Lady Virginia is defeated and drops headlong into financial ruin.

Her crusty old father won’t raise her allowance, she cannot lower her standards of living or lose her place in London high society. As all other machinations go on, political and financial shenanigans included, Lady Virginia’s bold and ingenuous plan to avert impending bankruptcy by trying to ensnare an American millionaire, provides the novel’s comic core.

Meanwhile, lovestruck Sir Giles smuggles his German girlfriend, Karin, out of East Berlin and becomes a hero. Harry tries to help a Soviet dissident writer,Anatoly Babakova (languishing in a gulag) in the midst of a hostile takeover of his friend’s publishing company.

There’s a lot more—every character faces a crisis (look for echoes of real life incidents), some sorted here, some probably have to wait for the last book in the series, This Was A Man, that will hopefully tie up any loose ends left over. Parts of Cometh The Hour read like a bad eighties Bollywood film, in which Margaret Thatcher unexpectedly makes a guest appearance. But it is also a page turner that has ‘hit’ stamped all over it.